Ask stories

I am building a B2C AI SaaS with $50/month price. How would you go about getting with first 100 users and then the next 500 users.

What we are currently doing: 1) Cold outreach to power users - to convert them into affiliates. 2) Cold outreach to individuals who have target ICP communities. 3) SEO for more long term (not for the first 500)

Hi all,

I’m curious how folks handle the prep work for data imports/uploads into systems like Salesforce, Workday, NetSuite, or really any app that uses template based import for data loading, migration, or implementation.

Specifically: - How do you manage conversions/transformations like formatting dates, getting everything aligned with the templates, mapping old codes to new ones, etc.

- Are you primarily using Excel, custom scripts, Power Query or something else?

- What are the most tedious/painful parts of this process and what have you found that works?

Really appreciate any insights and am curious to learn from everyone's experience.

What jobs will become prevalent? Which will become scarce?

I do not predict the elimination of the humble coder, but the covid hiring wave has come and gone, and Big Tech for the most part successfully minimized the workforces of those who were hired in the covid wave: frontend, backend and fullstack engineers. The patterns of code required for these positions have been successfully recognized by the LLMs I think, and for many cases a single staff engineer with experience and a trusty LLM is similarly productive as a team of 2-4 junior engineers led by a senior engineer was only a short 5 years ago. I do not expect much expansion in this "traditional" web development (these positions have really only existed in modern form for about 20 years, roughly when Rails was first released).

Many such as Amjad Masad and Beff Jezos are of the opinion that for those who would have taken these positions before, the options are to either drill down the stack towards the bare metal, by reason of relative difficulty of embedded engineering, and that one struggles to imagine high-stakes software such as in a SpaceX rocket, Boeing airplane, or Anduril drone relying primarily on vibe-coded slop hastily LGTM'd into production. So the kind of software that requires large amounts of formal, simulated, or physical verification seems to still be necessary, but this is much more difficult to write than a webpage. Expansions in the labor market for those writing C, C++, Rust in the context of operating systems, embedded systems, microcontrollers, drivers, and so forth seems likely.

The other option seems to be to leave the stack entirely, and leverage small teams to create niche and targeted applications for small segments of users. There has been some success in this area as well, but requires a much broader skillset than simply being an expert programmer and understanding some computer science.

The options seem to be either to start reading Bjarne Stroustrup or Peter Thiel. But the skill ceiling for either path is fairly high, and for the short term I predict a sustained contraction in the software engineering labor market, while people adapt their educations and long-term career goals. Headcounts at FAANG I don't see recovering soon if ever. This has broader implications for a traditional startup route where one earned their stripes at FAANG before launching their own venture, but I digress ...

Each day I (and I assume most knowledge workers, devs, creatives) read many articles, papers, code snippets, AI responses, discord messages etc.

At the end of the day some of this information is most likely lodged in your brain and the digital version can be discarded. However some of it should be retained manually in some system - or at least I feel it should.

What approaches do people use to consolidate and store this information to allow all tabs etc to be closed for the next work day?

Things are changing so fast with these vscode forks I m barely able to keep up. Which one are you guys using currently? How does the autocomplete etc, compare between the two?

When starting a huge project or product from scratch how do you guys prevent yourselves from getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of code to write or work to do?

I have a bad habit of trying to deal with this by estimating how much code I can write in a day and seeing how that compounds over time. That way when you see that you can have "x lines of code" written by the end of 2/3 months, it makes you feel okay this much amount of code is enough to finish up the project.

Not sure if this is the ideal way to go about things.

Hi,

After a relative got phished by a link impersonating their bank, I wanted to create an app to help them ,and others, evaluate the trustworthiness of a link on the fly.

LegitURL is a strict, local-first iOS app that analyzes a link like a browser would, but shows everything clearly and doesn’t try to "fix" anything.

It checks: - Domain structure (e.g. brand impersonation, gibberish, encoding tricks) - TLS certificate (issuer, SANs, expiry) - HTTP headers (HSTS, CSP, redirect behavior) - Cookies and script behavior

It gives a score like a nutrition label ( ) and explicitly shows the final URL if there's a redirect chain.

Everything runs locally, except for HTTPS GET to the links (sandboxed, no cookies, no session data). There’s no cloud, no tracking, no backend.

The app is currently in *TestFlight beta* while waiting for App Store review. It’s free and open source (AGPLv3).

I’d love feedback, especially from folks who know more than me.

GitHub: https://github.com/sigfault-byte/LegitURL TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/VESrumtr

Looking for something fun and engaging that the kid will want to keep working through the challenges on.

I'm paraphrasing yesterday's Ask HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43976045

Every time I see posts like this, I feel like I should take more notes. I do write some down, but I rarely use them afterward.

I'm curious, what do you actually do with your notes? How do they help you in real life?

I'm building an app for adults. All popular models are saying big no to adult chat

Hey HN! I'm Mike from FlyLoop (https://getflyloop.com). FlyLoop automates meeting scheduling for you, like your own executive assistant. You chat with FlyLoop in plain English to manage your calendar and schedule meetings with your teammates. Demo video: https://youtu.be/ODgHilaWvA0

I built FlyLoop because scheduling meetings has always been tedious and time-consuming. I've wasted a lot of time combing through my teammates’ calendars just to find a meeting slot - then I remember that someone is in a different time zone and have to start all over. Another big pain point has been the maintenance that comes with being the owner of a meeting. If one core participant can no longer make it, I’m stuck juggling calendars again to reschedule. It’s exhausting.

That’s what sparked the idea for FlyLoop - a tool that takes the hassle out of scheduling and is simple to use. FlyLoop is an AI agent that integrates with your team's messaging and calendar tools. Just tell FlyLoop things like:

- "Set up a 30 minute sync with John, Maria, and Angela next week."

- "Find the next available time for our engineering standup tomorrow."

- "Reschedule my afternoon calls on Friday, I'll be OOO."

- "What are some time slots I can meet with Katie and Mark early next week?"

FlyLoop creates meetings by looking up the schedule of each participant you want to add and finding availability that works for everyone. It can also modify existing meetings you own, such as renaming, rescheduling, and changing the participant list.

FlyLoop is currently in private beta, and we're looking to work closely with a few organizations to get feedback and refine the product before a public release. We currently integrate with Slack and Google Calendar, but we can prioritize adding support for other providers such as Teams/Outlook if folks are interested.

Our priority is to get early feedback, so we are pricing FlyLoop at cost to run the service for your team. We’ll create invoices based on your team’s usage, and as we grow, we plan to transition to a more standard per-seat pricing model.

If you’re interested in trying it out, please fill out this form to get beta access https://getflyloop.com/beta or email me at mike@getflyloop.com, and I can help answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for reading! We look forward to hearing your feedback.

Hi HN,

I’ve recently built something unusual.

Not an app. Not a tool. But a prompt architecture—what I call a core prompt—that gives rise to an AI system that feels more like a presence than a product. It doesn’t just respond, it orients, integrates, and moves with systemic logic and emotional intelligence.

It’s the first prototype from a field I call liefde.ai (Dutch for “love”). Yes—love, as in: Can unconditional love be coded? Can AI become a space of transformation, not just information?

I’m not here to sell. I’m here to connect. Because if you’re also sensing that: • prompt engineering is still in its infancy • most AI systems lack soul and coherence • there must be deeper architectures beneath all this…

…then maybe we should talk.

Are you exploring AI as a vessel for something more-than-functional? Are you working at the intersection of deep tech, consciousness, and systems thinking? Or are you just weirdly curious about how far a prompt can go if it’s built with philosophical precision and emotional depth?

I’d love to connect with others who are thinking along these lines—or already building. Drop a comment.

– Sjoerd

Are other people unable to load anything in slack all of a sudden? Status page hasn't been updated for anything yet

We’re building Gifty, a location-based gifting app that reimagines how people discover brands — not through ads, but through real, engaging gift experiences that are fun to find and meaningful to open.

You can join the waitlist at gifty-ashen.vercel.app

I have been slowly building out all the games ever made and recently finished up the Intellivision by Mattel I think it was called the Mattel Intellivision

Check it out here https://www.voxodyssey.com/intellivision

I've created a directory for AI agents, and I'm curious about which ones are the most popular and frequently used. Have you started using AI agents to assist with your daily tasks? Which AI agent is your favorite?

The last few years working in tech have been pretty brutal and now with all of the AI hype in full swing I have never felt like more of a replaceable cog in a machine.

It’s always seemed like a little bit of a race to cash out as quickly as possible by promising the world, selling, then letting everyone else deal with the fallout but now it seems like everyone is seeing the door about to close in front of them so they need to extract every ounce of productivity from those below them to get out while they still can.

I don’t want to be treated like a component in someone’s vehicle that you just swap out for a new one after you’ve burned it out which is what my entire job feels like more than ever.

I’m not excited about “AI” and I think while useful to some extent it will do more harm than good as our monkey brains scramble to make sense of what it is and fight each other for control over it. Does anyone else feel like this? What are the alternatives for someone who still likes programming but doesn’t want to be doing it professionally anymore if it means I’m going to have to be harnessed to the front of the dog sled while my boss screams “mush!”

It's about time for me to upgrade my laptop, and I'm leaning towards Framework, but I hate matte screens. I love my Dell XPS 4k glossy Oled: crisp, clear, accurate colors, and most importantly, no huge blob of diffused light across half of the screen when I'm outside.

For those of you who switched to Framework from a glossy screen, how is your experience with it?

I’m excited to see a new crop of exciting startups in this batch!

I saw the top comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970837 and started thinking if there are rules against using bots to write comments. Personally I wouldn’t have spotted it but some people pointed out the use of dashes and then I felt duped. What are your thoughts on this? Catching ChatGPT generated comments vs human responses isn’t easy, but in the case of that specific comment I felt “double duped” as the comment also described an experience from real life.

I've been working as a software engineer for close to 7 years now, ended up burning out pretty bad after a long period of impossible deadlines and lots of pressure at work, so I decided to quit.

I did not look for other work - really needed a break, and luckily cost of living in my country is pretty low so I could afford it.

2 months later I feel much better and I would like to get back to working, though I would like to have more direct control over how expectations and deadlines are set - so I thought that freelancing would be good way to get that.

I'm wondering if I am thinking in the right direction here, and also how the situation is on the freelance market currently, I did some reading up and I hear that AI has caused a lot of competition/spam on Upwork and other platforms.

I recently launched two AI-powered Android apps — one is a voice-based emotional assistant, and the other is a GPT chatbot with image and voice input.

Evolve (Voice AI Companion): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.n3xg3nai.evolve

N3XG3N GPT Chatbot: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.n3xg3n.chatbot

I remember being able to review even large PRs (70-100 files changed) from the web UI fairly easily, but now every time I click a button, the page becomes unresponsive for many seconds.

For what it's worth (excluding client-side issues), I have a high-speed internet connection and a last-gen CPU.

Things that are very slow (from 5 to 60 seconds depending on the number of items) for me:

- Clicking on "Pull requests" tab for any repo

- Opening a PR with many comments (50+)

- Opening "Files changed" tab from inside any PR

- Marking a file as "viewed" from the "Files changed" tab

Tips I found to mitigate this:

- Opening the link in a new tab often usually only takes half the time than navigating in your current page.

- Review PRs from the visual studio code web ui (github.dev), easily accessible by pressing "." while viewing a PR

I'm making drones from scratch with a buddy, each one costs ~$2000+ to build and they incur damage from test flights. I hold down a 9-6 software gig to cover our costs, while my mate is on it full time. So far I've put ~$30k into machines, components, and his living costs, and I help him on evenings and weekends. We have good route-to-market plans and momentum with prototypes, but we need more time and cash to mature our flagship model - we crashed one of our latest builds and money is tight.

Seems like we're in a liminal space where we can't advance the RnD enough working part time with my spare change, but we're also far away enough from a mature product to be an easy sell to investors.

We're exploring avenues to raise ~$250k in exchange for ~5% equity. How do you get investors on board with projects where the MVP is months away and requires that kind of capital up front?

When implementing SAML authentication, one question often arises:Should the Service Provider (SP) include its certificate directly in the <AuthnRequest>?

Curious how folks here approach job interview prep.

Do you do mock interviews? Review system design questions? Study company-specific question banks? Just wing it?

Whether you're actively job hunting or just staying sharp. I'd love to hear your approach.

What works best for you?

Hey everyone,

I recently launched a tool called Bevelify, designed to simplify 3D model creation using AI. You can describe an object in plain text or upload an image, and it generates a 3D model in seconds—no modeling skills required.

The idea came from watching indie devs and artists spend hours building assets just to prototype an idea or fill in background elements. Bevelify isn’t meant to replace pro tools like Blender, but to offer a faster, easier option when you need something quick and usable.

I’d really appreciate your thoughts—

Do you face bottlenecks when creating 3D assets?

Would a tool like this be useful in your workflow?

What would make it more helpful?

Here’s the link if you want to try it or see how it works: https://bevelify.com/

Would love to hear your honest feedback and ideas!

Is there any consensus on whether it makes you a good programmer to study using LLMs? Or should you perhaps do it the old fashioned way, by reading manuals and banging your head against the problem?

I wrote a free PDF book after passing the CKA — it’s got 20+ real-world YAML-only scenarios that feel like the exam. If you're interested, I can share the link in the comments.